Protean Quartet, winner of the prestigious first prize at the 2022 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, explores the String Quartet repertoire of the second half of the XVIII Century, from the last of the so-called “Russian Quartets”, by Franz Joseph Haydn, to Beethoven’s Op. 18 No.1, the first of his String Quartets to be published, but already a masterpiece of the repertoire. The album also includes the first recording of Juan Pedro Almeida’s Quartet op. 7 no. 1. Protean Quartet, performing on period instruments and historically informed criteria, delivers refined, vital, and highly expressive performances.